Jake Wallis Simons (@JakeWSimons) is a Telegraph features writer, novelist and broadcaster. His website is jakewallissimons.com. Follow him on Facebook here and on Twitter here. His fourth novel, Jam, which is set in a traffic jam on the M25, is out now.

The Hobbit, Nick Clegg and the clinical use of LSD

So the drugs don’t work? Tolkien appeared to think they do. As Rosamund Urwin noted in yesterday’s Evening Standard, in the film of the Hobbit the anti-drugs viewpoint is held by the wizard Saruman. At one point, he says of Radagast that “mushrooms have addled his brain”. As those familiar with The Lord Of The Rings will recall, Saruman later becomes the epitome of evil, while the liberal, mushroom-nibbling Radagast is a great hero. And then, of course, there’s Gandalf, merrily puffing on his “pipeweed” throughout.

In another example of life imitating art – and of side issues, like gay marriage, being inflated to obscure our economic woes – Nick Clegg this morning gave an interview to the Sun in which he called for the liberalisation of drugs policy. “For too long,” he said, “people in politics have worried that saying something differently can somehow look like you’re being soft.” He attempted, however, to square the circle, claiming that “I’m anti-drugs – it’s for that reason that I’m pro-reform.”

It is true that Britain’s drug policies have not been astonishingly successful. Some weeks ago, the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC) published the findings of a six-year study of the efficacy of Britain’s drug laws, stating that “there is little evidence to suggest that drug education and prevention have had any significant impact.” Over the last decade, it said, illegal drugs have got cheaper and more accessible, and levels of drug addiction and drug-related deaths remain high. However, despite their recommendations that the Government “revisit the level of penalties applied to all drug offences”, there is no conclusive evidence that relaxing legalisation would necessarily be more effective in reducing drug-related crime and fatalities.

There is one area, however, in which the government might do well to think again. That is in providing finding for legitimate medical research into the clinical use of illegal substances.

Dr Celia Morgan, a psychopharmacologist at University College London, is carrying out research into cannabis. She is trying to find out whether a component of the drug, CBD, can be used to treat a wide range of disorders, from psychosis to cancer cell growth. One unpleasant side-effect of our tough drug legislation, she told me when I interviewed her a while back, is that securing funding is an almost prohibitively difficult process. Although the Medical Research Council came through with her grant in the end, this was not sufficient to explore the full implications of her research questions.

The same often applies to hallucinogenic substances such as LSD and MDMA. The latter in particular is thought to be of particular use in treating sufferers of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This was highlighted earlier this year, when Channel Four aired a documentary entitled Drugs Live: The Ecstasy Trial. Under a special Home Office licence, volunteers were administered pure compound MDMA rather than street ecstasy, which is often contaminated with adulterants. Participants included the novelist Lionel Shriver, the former MP Evan Harris, Lily Allen’s father Keith Allen, an ex-soldier and a female vicar. The effects on their brains, as well as their subjective experiences, were monitored.

The study found that an area in the volunteers’ brains lit up when asked to recall positive memories after taking ecstasy; by contrast, an area that is linked to the processing of negative memories was suppressed. “That’s why we think giving the drug in a controlled setting to people with PTSD, who are plagued by terrifying memories, could make it easier to revisit them,” explained Dr Robin Carhard-Harris, one of the scientists involved in the research. “This should mean treatment aimed at helping them to overwrite or control those bad memories could become faster and more effective.” However, research into MDMA remains very limited, due to restrictions dating back to the Sixties.

The long and short of it is this. Nick Clegg, in his role as protector of Gandalf’s pipe, might be a little fuzzy around the edges. But there may be a kernel of truth in what he says. Even Saruman would have to admit that.